Earlier this week I wrote about how the iPad has the unique opportunity to change how publishers make money. This opportunity exists by shifting their focus away from trying to create as much content as possible, and focus rather on designing and crafting unique and compelling reading experiences that customers want to pay for. Then later this week, Cody Brown wrote on TechCrunch in a piece called "Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, Not an iBook":

The mission of an author isn't to get you to 'read all the words', it's to communicate in the rawest sense of the word. Whether you're Jeff Jarvis or Dan Brown, you have an idea or a story and a book is a way to express it to the world.

The iPad then provides content creators a new platform for communication. A way for readers to engage with text, story, narrative and information. Take a look at one person has done in retelling Alice in Wonderland on the iPad (a free book in the public domain):

Its like a modern day pop-up book! One that invites the user to interact with the story and to seek out and discover new ways in which you can interact with the page. So imagine the kind of experience one could craft if you retold the Da Vinci Code on the iPad?

What I am seeing is the chance for the iPad to redefine how we experience text itself. Text will no longer be a wholly static medium, but one that is increasingly adaptive and interactive.

There are few stories I find more compelling, more horrifying than those of being lost at sea. A recent episode of The Moth in which Deborah Scaling, an accomplished sailor, tells her story of being lost at sea for five days, reminded me of just that. Her story is particularly compelling because it is one of the few first-hand accounts I have heard. Here are two more of my favorite lost at sea stories:

• The story of the USS Indianapolis in which which 880 crewmen were left stranded in lifeboats after a Japanese submarine sunk their ship. Only 316 survived the four and half days at sea. Book: In Harm's Way.

• The story of two scuba divers, Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were inadvertently left behind by their boat in the open ocean. They were never found. A film entitled "Open Water" is an amazing retelling of what we can only imagine to be their experience.

I think what I miss most about "Battlestar Galactica" is talking about Battlestar Galactica. Luckily "The Plan" and the now airing Caprica has given me a few more opportunities to join my friends on the Galactica Quorum to do exactly what I miss most about the series! Sadly, I think there will only be a couple more episodes left.

Here is the very last podcast about Battlestar Galactica which I was lucky enough to join in on.

On the bright side, Brian, the producer of the award-winning Galactica Quorum, has started up a new series with many of the same personalities, aptly named The Geek Quorum (subscribe now in iTunes). Hopefully I will have the opportunity to join them talk about a wider variety of "geeky" television shows like Glee, Fringe and Lost, movies like Avatar, gadgets like the iPad and much, much more -- because if I start talking about this stuff with my wife too much, her eyes roll back in her head.

Not too long ago Amazon made some important changes to its API to improve security, but this change had the unfortunate result of breaking Media Manager. My knee-jerk reaction was to just go into my code and implement the API change directly in my custom built Amazon API library -- because hey, it would fix the problem and allow me to go about my day. But working on Melody has been a reminder to me about how important it is to drop proprietary code in favor of third party libraries when they emerge. It is not always the easy thing to do, because it often requires a huge effort to rewire your code to a new library, but in most cases it is the right thing to do because in the long run it will:

• Consolidate development around a library that more people will benefit from.
• Bring more features to your users faster.
• Allow you to leverage documentation written and maintained by someone else.
• Increase the size of your support community.

And that is what I did with Media Manager. I dropped all of my old proprietary Amazon API code in favor of a widely used, well supported CPAN module called Net::Amazon. In the process I dramatically simplified my code base, I incorporated more features that have emerged from Amazon's API since I initially wrote Media Manager, and made the framework easier to extend and use. All in all, it is proving to be a great change for the plugin that brings more features and capabilities to Media Manager users.

However, this change may also mean changes for its users. For a lot of Media Manager users, this new version may mean that your template code will no longer work. This change which breaks backwards compability was unfortunate, but to a great extent unavoidable, especially if I wanted to maximize the end-user benefits for shifting to Net::Amazon. So if you are an existing user of Media Manager and are anxious to restore interoperability with Amazon, then please consult Media Manager's new documentation with its many template code samples to see what changes you might need to update your blog's templates.

You can download Media Manager 2.1 from github, and file support tickets and bug reports in lighthouse. Please, if you have problems, let me know so that I fix them as soon as possible.

Media Manager provides users and authors within Movable Type and Melody with the ability to search and insert media from a number of popular remote services like Amazon and YouTube. Using Media Manager one can open a dialog, enter a few search terms, select the book, DVD or video and optionally insert it into a blog post.

Once the media item has been selected it is automatically inserted into Movable Type or Melody's asset management system and can be view by going to "Manage Assets" under the Manage menu.

Installation

To install this plugin follow the instructions found here:

http://tinyurl.com/easy-plugin-install

Prerequisites

Keep in mind that before installing Media Manager you need to make sure you have:

• Movable Type 4.01 or greater.
• Digest::SHA perl module
• Cache::File perl module

Download

Download Media Manager from github.

Resources

For Media Manager

• Template Tag Documentation
• Frequently Asked Questions

Related

• Melody
• MovableType
• Media Manager Homepage
• Amazon Web Services
• Net::Amazon

Bug Reports

You can file bug reports here:

• Via the Web
• Via Email

Help and Donations

Media Manager represents a lot of work by one individual. While the author is happy to write this software, and support it completely free of charge, the author also appreciates and form of support you can provide. Please consult the following URL to learn more:

http://www.majordojo.com/projects/mediamanager.php

Copyright

(c) 2007-2008 Six Apart, Ltd. (c) 2009 Byrne Reese

License

Media Manager is licensed under the Artistic License.

Q: What is the difference between version 2.1 and 2.0?

A: In 2009 Amazon made a significant change to their AWS Product Marketing API on top of which Media Manager and MTAmazon are built. Media Manager 2.1 contains the fixes and changes necessary to make Media Manager work once again with Amazon.

In updating the software to work with Amazon's new API, Media Manager was overhauled to utilize the CPAN module Net::Amazon. For most people this is meaningless, so let me explain. Net::Amazon is a library, a small bit of software that talks to Amazon's APIs on behalf of Media Manager. The library is maintained by a third party and far more flexible and performant than anything that has previously shipped with Media Manager.

Q: What are the changes between version 1.0 and 2.0?

A: Media Manager 2.0 is a dramatic evolution from its predecessor. Media Manager now integrates far more seamlessly with Movable Type then ever before.

In this rearchitecture of the software, however, I redefined what the goals of the software are and adjusted the scope and feature set of the product to meet those goals. For example, Media Manager 1.0 was an evolution of BookQueue and BookQueueToo, which by their name should indicate that they presumed you were managing books alone. As a result Media Manager 1.0 allowed users to set the "status" of an item as either "reading," "read" or "unread."

That is flawed assumption, especially in light of the fact that those statii are irrelevant to CD's not to mention patio furniture - both of which are available through Amazon. What follows is a list of features that have been REMOVED:

• item statuses - users are encouraged to use Movable Type's built in tagging system to manage the state of an item
• reviews - now that Movable Type allows users to insert assets directly in their posts, there is no need to support the concept of a "review."
• ratings - ratings were associated with reviews in previous versions and since reviews are gone, so are ratings
• list import - i suspect many users did not make use of this feature so the ability to import items from an Amazon Wishlist has been removed
• finished on date - yeah, sorry about this one for now

Q: Is Media Manager 1.0 forward compatible with Media Manager 2.0?

A: Items found in Media Manager 1.0 will automatically be ported into the new Media Manager 2.0 and Movable Type 4.0 system. However, not all data will be carried over. Reviews, ratings, and statii will NOT be ported over. Not yet anyways.

Q: Will my Media Manager 1.x template tags work with MT4 and MM2.0?

A: No they will not. To simplify the code base and bring focus to the Media Manager application, all legacy template tags have been removed. Movable Type's core template tag set should be sufficient for anything most users need to do.

For the most part, Media Manager does not yet expose any template tags of its own. The only template tags exposes by this plugin are specifically for interfacing with Amazon's API.

AmazonItemSearch

AmazonItemSearch is a container tag and is responsible for conducting virtually all searches against Amazon's Marketing/Product API. Using this container tag you can search for Books, DVDs, or any product in their catalog, as well wishlists and more.

The arguments/attributes this template tag supports is drawn directly from the Net::Amazon. In fact, all of the search parameters supported by Net::Amazon's search() method are supported as attributed by this tag. This tag can be used to search for a specific item (e.g. by UPC or ASIN ID), or a group of items (e.g. by keyword or category).

For example, here are some of the search parameters supported by Net::Amazon (for a complete list please visit Net::Amazon's homepage).

• asin - Returns a single item identified by its ASIN (or Amazon ID).
• actor - Return items starring an actor (or actress!). This is useful for video. Can return many results.
• artist - Return items created by an artist. This is useful for music. Can return many results.
• author - Search for items created by the specified author. This is useful for books obviously. Can return many results.
• browsenode - Returns a list of items by category ID (node). For example node "4025" is the CGI books category. You can add a keywords parameter to filter the results by that keyword.
• exchange - Returns an item offered by a third-party seller. The item is referenced by the so-called exchange ID.
• keyword (or keywords) - Search by keyword, mandatory parameters keyword and mode. Can return many results.
• wishlist - Search for all items in a specified wishlist. Can return many results.
• upc - Music search by UPC (product barcode), mandatory parameter upc. mode has to be set to music. Returns at most one result.
• isbn - Book search by ISBN (International Standard Book Number), mandatory parameter isbn. Returns at most one result. When searching non-US locales use the 13-digit ISBN.
• similar - Search for all items similar to the one represented by the ASIN provided. Can return many results.
• blended - Initiate a search for items in all categories.
• seller - Start a search on items sold by a specific third-party seller, referenced by its ID (not seller name).
• mode - The catalog by which to restrict your search. Common values are: Books, DVD, DigitalMusic, Merchants, VHS, and Video. A complete list can be found on Amazon's web site.

You can even combine the attributes to create compound searches. For example, to search for all books about "Blogging" you would use this tag:

<mt:AmazonItemSearch mode="book" keyword="blogging">
  <mt:if name="__first__"><ul></mt:if>
  <li><$mt:AmazonTitle$></li>
  <mt:if name="__last__"></ul></mt:if>
</mt:AmazonItemSearch>

AmazonASIN

Return the ASIN of the current Amazon product or item in context. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonTitle

Return the title or product name of the current Amazon product or item in context. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonDetailPageURL

Return the URL to the product currently in context. This URL will contain your Amazon associates ID if you have specified one. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonProductGroup

Return the product group of the item currently in context. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonImageTag

This returns a complete HTML tag referring the image associated with the current item in context. A user can optionally specify the size of the image they would like returned. The following values are allowed to be used in the size attribute:

• thumb
• small
• medium
• large

For example, the following template tag:

<$mt:AmazonImageTag size="small"$>

Returns the following HTML:

<img src="URL" width="WIDTH" height="HEIGHT" alt="ITEM TITLE" />

AmazonCustomImageURL

Amazon has a robust system for transforming images in the catalog in a number of different ways. Through this mechanism users can:

• blur an image
• rotate an image
• specify the exact width of an image
• add a drop shadow to the image
• and more

To make it easier to tweak images in these ways, the CustomImageURL tag was created. It accepts the following attributes:

• size - small|medium|large|thumb
• width -
• blur - 0-100, where 0 is clear, and 100 is blurry as hell
• rotate -
• shadow - left|right, to display a drop shadow on the left and right side respectively
• percent - 0-100, to display a "45% off" pill on the image
• percent_loc - left|right to display the "percent off pill" in the lower left, or lower right hand corner respectively

AmazonPrice

This returns the price of the current item. Amazon of course sells multiple version of an item. One can buy an item used or new. To specify which price you would like to display on your weblog use the type attribute. Acceptable values are:

• New
• Used
• Refurbished
• Consult Amazon's Web services documentation for a complete list

For example:

<$mt:AmazonPrice type="New"$>

The price that is returned is "formatted." In other words, it contains a currency character (like the dollar, pound, or euro sign), and the necessary decimals.

AmazonItemProperty

This is one of the more powerful template tags provided by Media Manager for Amazon, as it provides direct access to any attribute or property that a product might have. The list of all of these properties is not listed here because it is an extensive list. The best place to look for these properties can be found at the Net::Amazon homepage. When you click through you will see a bunch of links to modules like:

• Net::Amazon::Property
• Net::Amazon::Property::Book
• Net::Amazon::Property::CE
• Net::Amazon::Property::DVD
• Net::Amazon::Property::Music
• Net::Amazon::Property::Software
• Net::Amazon::Property::VideoGames

These modules each document the list of properties associated with each product/media type. Let's look at an example. The media type of "Software" supports a property called "studio" which is meant to hold the name of the studio that produced the software. To output this property you could use the following code:

<mt:AmazonItemSearch asin="B00005JNOG">
<img src="<$mt:AmazonItemProperty property="ImageUrlMedium"$>" /><br />
<a href="<$mt:AmazonDetailPageURL$>"><$mt:AmazonTitle$></a> - 
Studio: <$mt:AmazonItemProperty property="studio"$>
</mt:AmazonItemSearch>

Example Code

The following template tag sample code will show the last 4 Amazon items you added your system.

<mt:Assets type="amazon" lastn="4">
<mt:AssetsHeader>
<div class="sidebar-module pkg" style="width: 185px; clear: right;">
  <h2 class="module-header">Currently</h2>
  <div class="module-content">
    <ul class="module-list"></mt:AssetsHeader>
      <li class="item" style="float:left">
        <a class="asset-image" href="<$mt:AssetURL$>">
          <div style="height: 75px; width: 75px; padding: 5px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center center; background-image: url(<$mt:AssetThumbnailURL width="75"$>)"></div></a>
      </li>
    <mt:AssetsFooter></ul>
  </div>
</div>
</mt:AssetsFooter>
</mt:Assets>

See the documentation for the "Assets" tag for more information.

I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon right now as they recently made changes to their Amazon Product Advertising API that has broken Media Manager. Now I have numerous users tapping their feet anxiously waiting for an update, during a time in which I really should be working. I have only myself to blame though as Amazon gave me more than enough warning of this change, emailed me numerous times warning me about it, and honestly did all that a services provider should do to inform me of this impending change and its consequences. But naturally I procrastinated, and now I must reap what I sow.

On the flip side, this change has forced me to crack open one of my oldest plugins, one built with a great deal of duct tape and chicken wire, and retool it to be slightly more modern. Most users of course won't appreciate or notice a change, but I myself am relieved to finally replace all of my home-grown web services code, with a more stable and tested equivalent. This hopefully will make it easier for me to add features in the future and not cringe quite as much whenever a user reports a bug.

So while I privately curse Amazon under my breath, Media Manager and Movable Type users can thank Amazon for forcing me to finally devote some time to this plugin.

And that's the good news: Media Manager is getting a much needed overhaul: it is being updated to work with Amazon's new API restoring its operability; and I am making this work available for download today. The bad news is that this work is not 100% complete, so I must beg the for the community's continued patience and understanding in that this overhaul will take a little more time to complete. In the meantime, those willing to experiment with something that is partially complete, you can download and follow my progress with Media Manager over at github, and you can report bugs via the web and email over at Lighthouse.

In a way I am never to forget, our newest addition, Daisy Amelia Hailey Reese, was brought into the world at 5:16am on June 26, 2009. She was 7lbs, 10oz and 20.5 inches long. Labor was a mere 45 minutes long from start to finish.

For the full story of her, keep reading.

With the release of Movable Type Pro, and with us making is completely free to bloggers, the Universal Template Set has been quickly making its way into the hands of more bloggers. I often get asked by other UTS users, "could you send me your templates, I would like a front door that displays my action streams like yours does."

In the past I just replied to those emails after having cut and paste my template code into the email. But recently I created a handy template set generator, or exporter for Movable Type that makes it a snap for me to package up all of my templates into an easy to install plugin.

And that is exactly what I did with my current design. So if you are looking for a Universal Template Set, or Professional Website variant that includes support for Action Streams, look no further. Here it is:

Download Majordojo UTS now.

Prerequisites

• Action Streams
• Media Manager

Features

• Front door that has a list of recent blog entries, the last 20 items from your action stream, and a stream of items your are consuming from Amazon, YouTube and Flickr.
• A dedicated page and archive of Action Streams.
• Action Streams Atom Feed

Feedback

Yes, I want to hear it. Send me a comment.

This year for my birthday, Harper hit a home run when he purchased one of the coolest pop-up books I have ever laid my eyes on. The thickness of the book as a ratio to the number of pages I think says it all:

2 pages per inch

The book though is unique in that it isn't just 3D, it is practically 4D with layers upon layers of hidden details. Some obvious, and some not so obvious. Take for example the last page of the book in which Darth Vader's mask emerges from the pages in a spectacular display of paper architecture and engineering.

But what is most interesting about this particular page is not the mask, but what is inside the mask.

And that is just one page. A page in fact that has four other pages that can fold out and pop-up in addition. Like this mini-page:

By the way, if you are wondering if that lightsaber is glowing... yes it is.

If you are interested in buying the book for yourself or a Star Wars obsessed loved one like me, you can buy it from Amazon.

I think one of the reasons I love using Mint so much is because it was born out of an almost identical sense of frustration with existing tools like Quicken. From The History of Mint:
By quickly analyzing my spending trends, Mint is not able to recommend a monthly budget for any one of my expense categories. It automatically adds my budget for that category to my dashboard so that I can monitor it more closely, and will send me alerts when things are awry. I love it.

Ok, Mint team, here is what I want next... Continuing on the idea that finances can be fun, I would for you to give me some virtual reward for staying below budget. Send me an email at the end of the month congratulating me for being $25 below budget on gas, or shopping. Give me merit badges on my profile for saving on groceries. Do something that makes a game out of saving.

Next, and more mundanely, allow me to define the time frame for my budget. For example, my travel budget only makes sense within the context of a year, or quarter. I don't spent $400 per month, more like $2000 every 3-5 months. So in those months I will almost certainly be over budget for the month, but not the year.

As a wrap up, let me just once again compliment the team on their "Ways to Save" feature. That is a form of sponsorship and advertising I can really get behind. I honestly appreciate that the analysis that is done for me. I like the fact that I don't have to click on the ad to learn more. I like that the value is in the information, not the action.

I have not yet taken advantage of an offer, but the more I stare at these things the more tempted I am. It is truly only a matter of time.

One thing though please let me dismiss an offer. I am not about to leave T-Mobile, and seeing an ad for Vontage just kind of annoys me. Not to be too harsh or anything, but I am too loyal to T-Mobile to be bothered... plus I can't imagine all the iPhone users who are like, "um, hell no I am going to Vontage, AT&T is the only frickn vendor I can use..." You know?

But on top of that I think having that kind of data would be really useful to your advertisers: a) how many people dismissed it, and b) how many people looked at it and didn't dismiss it. Because if I didn't dismiss it, it kinda means I am still thinking about it... and that my friends is as good as bait on a hook to these banks and credit card companies.

Thank you Mint. I still love your product. Can you tell?

So yesterday was a day just like any other day, except that I had the pleasure of listening to a Movable Type user rant about our claimed, but "lacking" support for podcasting. Man, it hurts hearing such a passionate user become so frustrated.

But it is precisely at times like those that we at Six Apart swallow our pride and listen to our users. Not hear them. But actually listen to them.

And you know what, Todd is right about at least one thing: Movable Type's support for podcasting could be better. A lot better. So I went ahead and slapped together the first Podcasting Plugin for Movable Type 4.0, and I call upon Todd (and the rest of the Movable Type user community) to help me make this the best podcasting plugin for any blogging product.

Now I put together this first pass really quickly - in just a couple of hours actually, which I think is a testament to how easy it is to build a plugin on Movable Type for anyone who knows a little Perl, not to mention evidence to what it means to be a true Media Platform (see also the YouTube, Flickr and Amazon asset integration provided by Media Manager).

But I digress. I purposefully put together the most minimal feature set possible and still meet Todd's basic requirement: the ability to link to an externally hosted MP3 file and have Movable Type encode the necessary enclosures within an RSS and/or Atom feed. For fun I am redistributing a free flash MP3 player licensed under the creative commons to make it easy for users to allow readers to listen to their MP3 files directly from their blog.

But now I need to pass the baton to Todd, ProNet (especially Budd) and any other serious podcaster (Niall?) to help me shape the remaining feature set for this plugin. As a Product Manager myself I am reasonably certain think I could define a feature set myself, despite how clueless Todd may think I am, but I really do want this plugin to be something informed directly by the community. So please, everyone, chime in.

Todd, I am personally sorry you had a hard time with Movable Type. I sincerely hope this plugin will begin to provide the functionality you need, and I hope we can continue to evolve its feature set together as a team.

About five years ago I abandoned the last of my brick-and-mortar financial institutions so that I could manage my money exclusively online. I left Bank of America in favor of eTrade because I believed that as a modern Internet company eTrade stood a much better chance of developing the kind of banking application I would not only value, but also have a modern and savvy user interface. So I switched everything over and bought Quicken, with a rare enthusiasm and excitement for I believed that this would be the new dawn of a new me, a me that actually had his finances ordered and up to date at all times.

Imagine my surprise when I booted up Quicken only to find that it was incompatible with eTrade Bank. Believe it or not, that was in 2003. Three years later when my wife and I began to contemplate buying a new home and I had a renewed interest in trying to gain greater insight into how my wife and I spend money. So I decided to check back with Quicken and see if they had yet added support for eTrade Bank. They had not.

"Shock" does not even begin to describe the feeling I had. I had chosen eTrade because I believed that a company that existed almost exclusively online would work best with products like Quicken that wished to synchronize users' data with financial institutions over the Internet. Seems like a reasonable conclusion to reach, right? Um, yeah.

So in an effort to get a handle on my family's finances I turned to the oldest personal financial application around: Excel. I imported what I could from eTrade and then began the process of manually categorizing all of my income and expenditures over the past three months. It was excruciating and. mind-numbing. But it was also very error prone because my categorization scheme kept adapting and changing as I began to understand my own expenses more and more. During the whole process I kept asking myself, "can't Quicken do this for me? Don't they have enough people's data to know how people generally categorize a payment to Amazon or Grand Lake Theater?"

In the end I toiled over that spreadsheet for about 3-4 hours knowing full well that if I ever needed to update my finances I would need to do it all over again. Talk about poking yourself in the eye with a stick.

I had resigned myself to never finding a tool that would work for me. But just the other day, I stumbled upon a newly released product that in an almost clairvoyant fashion did exactly what I was trying to achieve in Excel in a little under 5 minutes. Plus it gave me the simple, easy to understand personal finance analytics I wanted out of Quicken, and it did it all for free.

So, yes, I am a fan of Mint. I will admit. But it is not perfect. It does a lot of things right, which I talk about below, but there are many things I would like to see it do differently.

Turning Personal Finance into a Game

A number of notable product design folk talk about the use of game mechanics within the tools we use to help fuel our use of and addiction to them. These same game mechanics can also be used to turn otherwise mundane or even anxiety-ridden tasks into ones that are actually and quite possibly fun. The "game" Mint offers lies in encouraging the user to take actions in their personal life in order to manipulate Mint in respondiing in a favorable and desired way. One very simple example of how Mint does this already is with the widget that shows a user's ratio of equity to debt. This is an incredibly reductionist view of your finances, granted, but that is the beauty because it is easy for me to understand how to move the bar left and right. Another good example is the "how do you compare" feature which actually pits me against others users in the system. This I love because it taps into my competitive nature. I hate know for example that I pay more then most others for gas, especially consider how little my wife and I drive.

Mint is only scratching the surface here. The truth is that Mint has lots of fertile ground to help provide additional feedback to the user to help encourage them to develop discipline around their finances, and I hope that Mint begins to define its more of its features with game mechanics specifically in mind. I just love the idea of an application I use enticing me to be better about finances - either overtly or subconsciously. I don't care, because the end result is a real value to me no matter what.

The Brilliance Behind the Product

Omniture and then Google showed the world that advertising can be actually be perceived as valuable by users when that advertising is actually relevant to the content of the page and provides some kind of value to the user. It is my belief that search remains the only context for advertising where the ad serves a purpose and value relatively equal to the content itself. Sure, content targeted advertising on blogs can be relevant, but they are still widely recognized as "ads" in the most pejorative sense of the word, and not immediately perceived as a value.

Mint may very well have discovered the next form of ad unit that provides what consumers will widely perceive as truly valuable. Just click on the "Ways to Save" and you are immediately taken to a page that shows me products and services that will potentially save me money. For example, Mint knows what credit cards I have and their interest rate, so it can present me with credit cards to transfer my balance that will save me on interest payments. Mint also knows who my cell phone provider and can present me with alternative cell phone providers that can save me money on my monthly payment. I honestly hope that one day Mint will also:

• Help me find a better longer term mortgage. What I hope Mint does not do is help me lower my monthly payment. That is a crock. I want Mint to help me build equity in my home, not help others leach equity from it.
• Offer vacation packages for me based upon the cities it sees me spend money. For example, Mint should know that I visit Los Angeles from time to time, and should be able to offer ways to save on my next trip there.
• Help me find a better place to save my money by recommending CDs or Mutual Funds based upon how much of my equity is liquid on average.

A Few Recommendations for Mint

• Make Community More Apparent - The "How do you Compare" feature is awesome, but I think there is greater potential to inform how users can more actively contribute to the system and one another. It would be great to actually show information about each transaction on how others have categorized an item. I am certain their must be something at work on the backend taking into account how others are training the system, but surfacing that information I think will help encourage that behavior in users even more.

• Allow for Category Suggestions - I actually like the constraints you place around categories. While I think a compelling argument can be made to allow people to create their own ontology, I think it is wiser to constrain users, lest they over complicate something that Mint is trying to keep simple. But man, I sure would like a few changes made... perhaps you could let users suggest categories? For example, I would love a category for Home Business (both income and expense). Oh, and I want a "Delivery" option under Food because one thing I am dying to know about myself is how often I "order out."

• Encourage me to Categorize - I think categorization is one of the most important activities a user can engage in. There should be some kind of statistic on the dashboard widget that shows how many uncategorized items I may have. When I click it I should be taken to a "to do list" of sorts that shows all of the uncategorized transactions in my account. As I assign each to a category, my to do list gets smaller and smaller. Ultimately I should categorize very infrequently because over time I should be training the system to do it for me.

• "Labels?" Come on, they're tags. - I wish a more conventional method for applying labels, or let's be honest with one another, tags to my transactions. I would be more diligent about tagging my transactions if the process was more fluid and less cumbersome. Go for a tagging interaction model like Flickr or Vox.

• Spending Trends Improvements - The pie chart is nice, but it is not 66%-of-the-screen-nice. Some of the stats I am really interested in are the less prominent stats, like who are my "favorite" merchants, especially over time. I also want to gain a better understanding of income as well and the ebb and flow of income to expense. Let me blow up spending charts... I want to see more than the top 3 places I spend money within any given category.

Media Manager is still in beta for Movable Type 4.0, but it is still relatively stable and in use by a number of different users across the web. To help demonstrate how seamlessly Movable Type can integrate with a third party content provider, like Amazon, I created a quick screencast demonstrating the plugin, which makes extensive use of Movable Type's extensible asset framework.

Media Manager has been a hobby of mine ever since I first started working for SIx Apart; from my first release of BookQueueToo, which was an expanded version of BookQueue, to a nearly completely rewritten Media Manager for Movable Type 3.x, this plugin has been how I, as the Product Manager for Movable Type, understand the developer experience of building plugins with the Movable Type platform.

When I set out to update Media Manager to work with Movable Type 4.0, I really wanted to take a fresh look at how it was built, and what the user experience was like. My previous versions of Media Manager surfaced far too much complexity by trying to bundle too many different capabilities into the product, like "reviews" and "ratings" which are probably, in all honesty, functionality best left to be fulfilled by other more specialized plugins. I also wanted to remove some vestigial features that were left over from the plugin's earliest incarnations, such as the statuses "read," "reading," and "not read" - which are perfect if the only thing you consume is books, not so great if you like DVDs, CDs and even kitchen appliances.

Despite however Media Manager's reduction in complexity, Media Manager 2.0 is a far more advanced plugin then its predecessors. That is because it integrates more smoothly and seamlessly with the core Movable Type user experience then ever before, thanks to Movable Type's incredible developer APIs. However, to some users Media Manager may seem too simple having "lost" many of its formally core features. For example here are the features that will ultimately be removed from the core Media Manager plugin once it is officially released later this year:

• Almost all of Media Manager's template tags will be completely removed in favor of template tags defined by Movable Type itself
• Reviews have been completely removed, because Movable Type now makes it crazy-easy to insert assets, like Books and DVDs from Amazon, into entries and page content.
• Ratings have been completely removed because this is functionality that is best served by another plugin like Mark Carey's Ajax Rating plugin.

I do this not only because I want Media Manager to serve as a reference implementation to other developers on how plugins should be built and how they can best leverage capabilities within the platform, but also because it is what is best for the product. I want it to be simpler and easier to use, more focused, and capable ultimately of support services like YouTube and Flickr.

So today, I release the first public beta of Media Manager 2.0 to hear your feedback and your thoughts on the changes I have made, as well as get your advice and suggestions on how I can make Media Manager better.

• Download MediaManager-2.0b1.zip

Overview

MTAmazon is a plugin for Movable Type that provides template tags for displaying information from Amazon's product catalog.

Important Notice

MTAmazon is no longer maintained as a separate stand alone plugin. Users wishing to integrate Movable Type with Amazon should use Media Manager (which MTAmazon comes bundled with).

History

• MTAmazon was originally written by Adam Kalsey. As I developed Media Manager I wished to make changes and Adam allowed me to take over development of his plugin.
• I initially renamed and repackaged MTAmazon for Movable Type 3.2 and thought it clever to name the software MTAmazon32. I have since regretted that decision as it only has led to confusion about the difference between MTAmazon and MTAmazon32. In truth there is little difference.
• Later I found that most users wishing to use MTAmazon, really desired the functionality of Media Manager which made great use of MTAmazon's functionality. To simplify the installation of Media Manager, I began to bundle MTAmazon with Media Manager, which I continue to do todat.

Latest Documentation

Below is the documentation for the version of MTAmazon that ships with Media Manager.

• MTAmazon 3.0 Template Tag Reference

Legacy Documentation

• What is Amazon32?
• Installing MTAmazon32
• MTAmazon32 Template Tag Reference
• Troubleshooting MTAmazon: "Nothing shows up for me!"
• MTAmazon Getting Started Guide

Download

Users wishing the most recent version of MTAmazon should download Media Manager, which MTAmazon is now bundled with. Only users of Movable Type 3.2 and before download the following packages.

• Unix (tar.gz)
• Windows (zip)

MTAmazon is one of the most useful and widely used Movable Type plugins available. And even though Amazon has updated their Web Services API several times, the plugin has not been. In fact, it has not been updated in over one and a half years, and will not likely be updated again.

Learning that was disappointing because a project near and dear to my heart, Media Manager, uses MTAmazon extensively; and MTAmazon does not deliver the user experience I want. So I took it upon myself to make some updates, specifically around plugin configuration and management in an effort to make MTAmazon easier and more flexible in its configuration.

Therefore, MTAmazon32 is a re-packaging of MTAmazon providing a more integrated experience with the Movable Type publishing platform. It integrates with the latest version of Movable Type and takes advantage of all the new plugin hooks available. It offers integrated system level plugin settings, and blog specific plugin settings. It no longer requires administrators to edit configuration files located on the file server. Everything is now done through easy to use MT-enable configuration screens.

MTAmazon32's System Level Config Screen

MTAmazon32's Blog Specific Config Screen

In future version's MTAmazon32 will take advantage of the latest APIs from Amazon, and will have even more configuration and cacheing options.

And yes, all the old MTAmazon template tags work with MTAmazon32. It is 100% backwards compatible. Enjoy.

Install MTAmazon32's files

• If you have not already, upgrade Movable Type to the latest version (MT3.2 or greater required). Upgrading MT is frick'n easy now...
• If you have the legacy plugin MTAmazon installed, remove it.
• Download the latest release of MTAmazon32.
• Navigate to MovableType's home directory (the directory that contains mt.cgi. Unzip the MTAmazon32 package. This will place all of MTAmazon32 plugin files into $MT_HOME/plugins/MTAmazon32/.

Obtain an Amazon Web Services Subscriber Id

Once you have installed MTAmazon32, you must then obtain a Subscriber Id from Amazon Web Services. This "subscriber Id" is what gives you access to Amazon's product catalog. Obtaining a Subscriber Id is easy, just visit the following URL and following the instructions found there:

https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/registration/index.html

Take note of the Subscriber Id assigned to you. You will need to use it later.

Obtain an Amazon Associates Id

Now you will need to be become an Amazon Associate. Belonging to this program is what entitles you to earn referral fees for the customers you refer to Amazon. Signing up is free and easy. Just visit the url below and follow the instructions found there:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=gw1_mm_2/002-9251244-2700840/?node=3435371

Configure the MTAmazon32 Plugin

Assuming you have gotten this far, you now have an Associates Id and a Subscriber Id. Now it is time to plugin them into Movable Type. First click the "SYSTEM OVERVIEW" link at the top of every page in Movable Type. Then look for and click on the Plugins link in your left nav bar. You will then be taken to a list of all the plugins currently installed in your instance of Movable Type. Look for "MTAmazon32" and click on its Show Settings link.

Enter in the Subscriber Id you received from Amazon in the space provided. This Subscriber Id enables all the blogs in the current instance of Movable Type to speak with Amazon's Web Services. This need only be entered once for the entire system.

However, each weblog has the option of providing its own distinct Associates Id. To configure a weblog, select it in the pull down menu located at the top of every page and click "Go." Then click the Settings link located in the left nav bar. Then click the "Plugins" tab located on the far right (you should find it right next to "IP Banning"). Look for "MTAmazon32" and click on its Show Settings link.

Finally, enter in your Amazon Associates Id in the place provided. You can enter in a different Associates Id for each blog in your system.

The next version of MTAmazon is coming along nicely. I am almost at feature parity with the current version. All that is left to is plumb MTAmazon into Movable Type’s installation/upgrade process so that its database schemas are managed automatically (a feature that will be found core in Movable Type 3.3). In any event, the alpha is available for download.